Ragnarok Odyssey is Gung-ho's attempt to turn their popular MMO into a Monster Hunter and Phantasy Star Online style game. They game certainly has it's share of problems but for the most part, Gung-ho did a pretty good job for a first attempt.

First of all, people will compare this to Monster Hunter, and for good reason. Monster Hunter has taken this style of games to new heights of popularity in Japan so it is only natural to compare the two. They are very similar. Much like Monster Hunter, Ragnarok Odyssey has little to know story. You are given the simple back story of being sent to an outpost in order to fend of an oncoming attack. They story is so poor that you can ignore entirely.

At the outpost were the game takes place you are able to accept quests, buy potions, weapons, armor and more. You also have your own room in which you can access DLC as well as your wears in order to make whatever changes you need. Here you can also save equipment sets for easier access switching between them, which in the later stages of the game becomes more and more necessary. You also have a music player to listen to whatever tracks you've unlocked, which can also be played during your missions. Your room also acts as your save point. The last major function your room serves is the ability to switch between the games six classes, a feature that becomes available during chapter 2.

The battle system consists of your run of the mill hack'n'slash combat with a touch of fighting game combos thrown in. You can vary your attacks between strong and weak attacks to create combo chains which often end with flashy moves that do more than normal damage. These ending combos can also have their damage strengthened via a card system, which acts as the system for customizing your characters. As you deal damage to a monster you are able to knock them into the air in which case your character will automatically jump up after them and continue to attack. This ability to jump in the air is one of the major differences between Ragnarok Odyssey and Monster Hunter. There are monsters that fly and some of the bosses are so huge you will literally be spending most of your time fighting them while in the air. These boss monsters are one of the games strongest points. They are pretty well done and usually have weakpoints that can be exposed by attacking that point until the armor breaks. The other major difference is in the speed of combat. Every Monster Hunter I've played has felt sluggish. Ragnarok Odyssey on the other hand feels fluid and fast paced, making the experience overall better.

I mentioned before that your character customization comes in the form of cards. These cards have an equip value ranging from 5 to 50 and offer various effects such as more health or attack and even negative effects such as less defense. You can buy some basic cards from the vendors but the real good ones come as rare drops off monsters and bosses in the game. The other way to obtain cards is via your weapons. Weapons also come with abilities attached to them but they can't be freely altered. Every weapon can be upgraded up to 10 times and during the upgrade process there is a small chance its abilities will get better or outright change. Once a weapon has been upgraded 10 times you can turn it into a card with the same abilities.
The other way of customizing your character is via armor. However, unlike most games armor has no numerical values out side of card space. Any character can wear any piece of armor so it's up to you to use what you like best. Armor usually starts with enough space to equip 50 points worth of cards and like weapons can be upgraded. This can increase the value of up to a max of 100 points. It's figuring out the best combination of cards that you can fit into 100 points worth of space that is really addicting about this game.
The last bit of customization you can do is purely cosmetic and that is adding head piece as well as changing hair styles.

As mentioned briefly before, the game has six classes. Sword Warrior, Hammer Smith, Assassin, Mage, Cleric and Hunter. While each play differently one of my biggest complaints lies with the classes. The Mage and Hunter classes, which are traditionally long range, are short range classes in this game. What I mean by that is in order to activate their abilities you have to melee attack first using combos to get the end parts of the combo. For a Mage this would mean that in order to cast an AOE spell you would first need to attack a monster in melee 4 times. The Mage and Hunter also have low HP and Defense like you would normally expect so until very late in the game when you can use some rather cheap card combinations, they are effectively useless.

Ragnarok Odyssey also features an ad-hoc mode in which up to four people can team up to take on the games missions. When doing this the difficulty is also increased as is the drops from monsters. In an odd move however, online play was not included at launch and as of this writing has still not been included. That being said the ad-hoc functions well enough teaming up with three other people to take on some of the bosses is a lot of fun.

CLOSING COMMENTS
Basically a clone of Monster Hunter, but a pretty good one at that. Ragnarok Odyssey's battle system and boss battles are where it shines. The card customization system is pretty fun itself too. Lack of online multiplayer hurts a bit but Gung-ho has promised it in a future patch, along with other DLC quests and new items. If you like Monster Hunter or those style of games give this one try, but if you aren't particularly into that style of game this one probably wont change your mind.

PRESENTATION: 8.0 - Giant bosses are awesome, need I say much more? If you buy the hard copy of the game it's one of the few Vita titles that comes with a hefty instructions manual.

GRAPHICS: 7.0 - It's no Uncharted but it doesn't look terrible either. Level variation is pretty good too, however, monster character models get overused a bit much.

SOUND: 8.0 - Ragnarok Odyssey's soundtrack itself isn't anything great but you are able to unlock music from past games as well as get more as free DLC. There is no voice acting but then again this game doesn't need it, nor want it.

GAMEPLAY: 8.0 - Fast paced combat with giant bosses are a nice combination. Lack of a real ranged character due to fundamental design choices sucks though.

LASTING APPEAL: 9.0 - Getting the best cards will take a while and ad-hoc is always fun. Gung-ho has also promised more quests as DLC as well as online so you have plenty of reasons to keep playing.